Well, I am not entirely sure of what the OP really wanted to know, but please, be patient with her or him. If the OP has only used so far purely compiled languages such as C, C++, Pascal or Ada, he or she might not know how to use interpreted or semi-compiled languages such as Perl, Python, TCL, Ruby or even Java. She or he might think that it is needed to go through a compile (and possibly link) phase.

If the OP is a pure beginner, he or she might not yet know these things. Of course, there is plenty of documentation around there, but when you start, you don't necessarily fetch the right one to start with.

To the OP: usually, the simplest way to run a Perl program is to type something like: "perl my_prog.pl arguments". There are some shortcuts, but they depend on your operating system.